The seventies were wild. People danced under disco balls, wore platform shoes without irony, and threw dinner parties where the food was just as much about showmanship as taste. What we considered sophisticated back then would look pretty bizarre on today’s Instagram feeds. These dishes screamed status, elegance, and worldliness to our parents and grandparents, yet most have vanished from modern tables without so much as a farewell toast.
Here’s the thing about food trends. They tell stories about who we were, what we valued, and how we wanted to be seen. The luxury foods of the 1970s weren’t just meals; they were cultural artifacts wrapped in pastry and drizzled with brandy sauce.
Steak Diane
In the 1970s, one dish reigned supreme: steak Diane, a simple dish of well-seared steak smothered in a rich, creamy sauce. This tableside spectacle involved flambéing meat in front of impressed dinner guests, with flames leaping dramatically from the pan. The sauce itself traced its origins back to the 19th century when a Sauce a la Diane made from cream, truffles, and black pepper was often used as an accompaniment to venison. By the 1970s, ever-expensive truffles were conspicuously absent from the contemporary recipe, and the sauce instead consisted of shallots, garlic, cream, brandy, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.
Fondue
Let’s be real: nothing said “I’ve arrived” quite like owning a fondue pot in the seventies. NPR reported that the popularity of fondue was no accident, as it was planned by a shadowy association of Swiss cheese makers which aimed to convince the world to consume pots full of melted fat. The 1970s was the decade that fondue really hit its stride. Honestly, the whole setup was genius from a hosting perspective: minimal cooking, maximum socializing, and you could literally just cut up whatever was in your fridge for dipping.
By the 1960s there were nine different brands offering premade fondue in packets or cans, and there was a huge influx of fondue cookbooks in the late sixties and early seventies with thirty seven different brands of fondue pots in a variety of price ranges. It’s hard to say for sure, but that level of market saturation suggests fondue wasn’t just a fad. It was an empire.
Crab Rangoon
Crab rangoon was on the menu of the Polynesian-style restaurant Trader Vic’s in Beverly Hills in 1955, and the dish was probably invented in the United States by Chinese-American chef Joe Young working under Victor Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic’s. Here’s where it gets interesting: despite appearing on every Chinese restaurant menu across America, this dish has zero connection to actual Chinese cuisine. Cream cheese was a staple of 1940s and 1950s American cuisine, but it is not found in Chinese or Burmese cuisine.
By the 1970s, crab rangoon was a standard appetizer on Chinese menus nationwide and had cemented its place as one of the quintessential appetizers in Chinese-American cuisine. The crispy, creamy dumplings became so ubiquitous that most people assumed they were ordering something authentically Asian rather than a tiki bar experiment gone mainstream.
Baked Alaska
Think of 1970s food culture in all its weirdness and strange extravagance, and you may well think of the baked Alaska, a quintessentially seventies dessert emblematic of the decade, despite the fact that it was created long before the years of bell-bottom jeans and Star Wars. This physics-defying dessert featured ice cream encased in meringue, then baked or torched until golden. The baked Alaska relies on its hair-raising ability to cook on its outside, generating a bronzed, crispy meringue exterior, while keeping the ice cream inside chilled and solid.
It grew in popularity in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s and may be regarded as part of the same retro food. Watching someone pull a frozen dessert out of a hot oven never stopped being impressive, no matter how many times you’d seen it done.
Quiche Lorraine
This French delicacy may have been around for centuries, but its popularity soared in the 1970s and 1980s in the US. A go-to dish to serve at brunch, it typically features crispy bacon lardons, cheese like Gruyère, Emmental, or Cheddar, eggs, and cream, all baked in a golden pastry case. Quiche became the centerpiece of countless brunches and ladies’ luncheons throughout the decade. It represented European sophistication packaged in a way Americans could easily replicate at home.
Quiche Lorraine became a symbol of sophisticated dining and a staple of the decade’s dinner parties, although these days it’s almost exclusively reserved for brunch.
Duck à l’Orange
Ordering duck à l’orange at a restaurant in 1973 meant you had both money and worldly taste, as the combination of rich duck with citrus sauce was French cuisine at its most accessible to American palates. This dish was peak Continental dining, served at the fanciest restaurants where waiters wore tuxedos and menus didn’t list prices. These days, it’s a cliché of outdated French cooking, as modern chefs wouldn’t dream of drowning perfectly good duck in sugary orange sauce.
It was an age of dinner parties primed with delicate slices of duck a l’orange, hostess trolleys stacked with questionable slices of meringue-topped pies, and trays laden with enough vol-au-vents to stun a heifer.
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Chicken Cordon Bleu was a dinner party classic that was stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese, then breaded and fried to golden perfection. The dish represented everything aspirational about seventies entertaining: European inspiration, labor-intensive preparation, and impressive presentation. Today you can find boxes of pre-made chicken cordon bleu in frozen food aisles for a few dollars, as it went from fine dining to TV dinner faster than you can say processed cheese product.
The transformation is pretty jarring when you think about it. Something our grandparents slaved over for special occasions now sits next to fish sticks in the freezer section.
Prawn Cocktail
A prawn cocktail was the epitome of 1970s elegance, mainly as a starter at dinner parties or in chic restaurants, and was most often served in a stemmed glass with a tangy Marie Rose sauce and a bed of crisp lettuce. Nothing screamed luxury in the 1970s quite like a shrimp cocktail. The dish was simple: cooked prawns or shrimp arranged artfully in a fancy glass, usually perched on the edge with their tails hanging over for dramatic effect.
It was a time of pineapple hedgehogs, rainbow-hued trifles, and prawn cocktails. These starters represented the height of sophistication before we collectively decided that raw fish and farm-to-table vegetables were more our speed.
Black Forest Cake
This German-born dessert is an exercise in seeing how many ways you can infuse one cake with cherry flavor, composed of layers of chocolate cake that have been thoroughly soaked with kirsch and topped with maraschino cherries, while some versions even have sour cherries stuffed between the layers. Though it was first invented in 1915, its popularity soared stateside in the 1970s.
Black forest cake was a beloved dessert in the 1970s, known for its indulgent layers of rich chocolate cake, whipped cream, and tart cherries, with an elegant appearance that made it the perfect dessert for special occasions or fancy dinner parties.
Beef Stroganoff
This Russian import became comfort food royalty during the seventies. This Russian-inspired dish became a staple in many American households, appreciated for its creamy mushroom sauce and tender beef strips, as it was a bit of a culinary escape for many, bringing a taste of Eastern Europe to American kitchens with rich, comforting flavors that made it a favorite for dinner parties and family gatherings alike.
Honestly, beef stroganoff perfectly captured the decade’s fascination with foreign cuisines adapted to American taste buds. It was exotic enough to feel special yet familiar enough to serve to picky eaters. Roughly speaking, every decent home cook had their own version of this dish in their repertoire.
Crown Roast of Lamb
The crown roast of pork or lamb was a centerpiece of extravagant 1970s feasts, often reserved for special occasions like holidays or dinner parties, with its dramatic presentation of bone-in ribs arranged in a circular crown and filled with stuffing. Crown roast of lamb was quite exquisite for formal dinners, as lamb racks shaped a crown beautifully as an impressive presentation serving six to eight people.
The sheer effort required to prepare this dish signaled serious culinary ambition. It’s hard to imagine anyone under forty attempting this elaborate showpiece today when we’re more likely to order takeout than carve a crown roast.
Vol-au-Vents
Vol-au-vents were a quintessential 1970s party food, celebrated for their versatility and elegance, as these puff pastry cases were often filled with creamy chicken, mushrooms, chopped vegetables, or seafood and were a must-have on buffet tables and hors d’oeuvre platters. These delicate French pastries required genuine skill to execute properly, which made them perfect status symbols for ambitious hosts.
Hostess trolleys were stacked with questionable slices of meringue-topped pies, and trays laden with enough vol-au-vents to stun a heifer. The tiny puff pastry shells represented everything aspirational about seventies entertaining: French technique, impressive presentation, and the ability to make dozens of identical appetizers that looked like you’d hired a caterer.
